'I wouldn't let them tell you,' he said 'I made them promise not to
tell you till I could do it myself. I heard of Jem Millar's death as
soon as I arrived in England, and I wrote off and applied for the place
at once. I told them I was your son, father, and they gave me it at
once, as soon as they heard where I had been all these years.'
'And where have you been, David, never to send us a line all the time?'
'Well, it's a long story,' said my father; 'let's come in, and I'll tell
you all about it.'
So we went in together, and my father still looked at me. 'He's very
like HER, father,' he said, in a husky voice.
I knew he meant my mother!
'Then you heard about poor Alice?' said my grandfather.
'Yes,' he said; 'it was a very curious thing. A man from these parts
happened to be on board the vessel I came home in, and he told me all
about it. I felt as if I had no heart left in me, when I heard she was
gone. I had just been thinking all the time how glad she would be to see
me.'
Then my grandfather told him all he could about my poor mother. How she
had longed to hear from him; and how, as week after week and month after
month went by, and no news came, she had gradually become weaker and
weaker. All this and much more he told him; and whenever he stopped, my
father always wanted to hear more, so that it was not until we were
sitting over the watchroom fire in the evening that my father began to
tell us his story.
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